Remember these four companies: EMI, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. They are the “big four” members of the Recording Industry Association of America – that soulless organization that has been effectively extorting money from college students nationwide through the use of lawsuits related to illegal downloading. These are the companies college students at the university and across America have a solemn responsibility to shun, boycott and villainize until the lawsuits stop.
Even as the RIAA pushes forward with its lawsuits against eight university students and issues countless letters to goad students into settling out of court for exorbitant fees and without the benefit of trial, students told The Diamondback’s Kevin Robillard that they have no plans to abandon their illegal downloading habits.
That’s a mistake. Students are growing too accustomed to an unethical practice that is counter to American capitalist values. But the RIAA itself is to blame for much of the illegal downloading habits students have wrongly picked up.
We’re talking about an organization that has settled lawsuits accusing them of price-fixing CDs, tried to convince judges to rule on motions that would make wireless internet hotspots nearly impossible to operate and forced consumers to deal with technological constraints on music purchases that are so restrictive, even the CEO of online music giant iTunes has railed against them.
Those online music restrictions, known as Digital Rights Management, are the reason that music services such as Ruckus are doomed to fail. To be fair, the university is a subscriber of Ruckus mostly to help deflect accusations that the university is sitting blithely by while students plunder the internet for free music. But the service is loaded with DRM, and students have leveled criticism reminiscent of the immensely unpopular CDigix, which the university signed up for in 2005.
It’s very likely that one day the RIAA will die the slow death that most technophobic companies and organizations will suffer. As new artists begin adapting to the self-promotion opportunities of the internet, utilizing technology that sharply cuts the price of producing music and as consumers begin flocking to new and less restrictive business models to get their music, the RIAA will eventually become obsolete.
But until then, students need to take a stand and stop supporting music companies whose trade organization has no qualms about suing 12-year-olds and poor college students – segments of society that in some ways are highly vulnerable, but will someday become the most powerful. We know that MTV and the radio are difficult to ignore, but students still need to go out of their way to buy used CDs, support artists with an independent streak and stand up to an organization that is the epitome of vile corporate greed in America.
